


When You're Gone

by swansaloft (orphan_account)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, pre-relationship SQ
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 02:20:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3919204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/swansaloft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>*FINALE SPOILERS* She is starting to realize that the name <i>Emma Swan</i> is etched more deeply and permanently in her heart than it ever could be on a piece of enchanted metal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When You're Gone

**Author's Note:**

> Don't mind me. Just joining the legions of people writing Regina-desperately-searching-for-Emma fics. Because I can't stop thinking about it. Also, this is pretty much unedited word vomiting of feels, so apologies for any mistakes.

They look for her until they can’t search anymore.

 

Until the clock tower shows it’s three in the morning and Snow’s so tired she can’t stop crying and Robin has to get back to Roland. Everyone agrees getting some sleep is the best idea, that they’ll meet up again in the morning to discuss a plan of action. And Regina, Regina chokes back the words  _What about “I will always find you”_  and follows the Charmings back to their home and ensures Henry is curled up safely on the couch before she continues.

 

The others were only slowing her down anyway.

 

Now she can use magic, and she poofs everywhere she can think of. She goes to her office, to the well, to the crypt. She searches the author’s house, the cabin where the Queens of Darkness had been hiding out, even the farmhouse where Zelena had stayed. She tries a locator spell again to no avail. She goes everywhere she can think of, her voice growing hoarse from shouting Emma’s name over and over. She is running out of places to check and her magic is draining, and it’s probably not helped by the fact that she hasn’t let go of the dagger since she grabbed it off the street and screamed “NO!” because  _she told her not to_  and  _why does she have to be so stubborn_  and  _can’t lose Emma_.

 

But she can’t stop can’t stop can’t stop. If she stops, she doesn’t know what will happen. If she stops, she’s admitting defeat.

 

Her cell phone rings and apparently it’s morning and time for the Save Emma rendezvous. She goes and sits until she can’t and she paces back and forth while worthless ideas are tossed around, and none of this is going to work. Forever incompetent, the Charmings, and they’re supposed to be all about finding people, so why is it that they can never get it right with Emma, with their own fucking daughter they’re supposed to love so much?

 

She can’t hold it in anymore, tells them they’re wasting her time and to call her when they have something worthwhile to contribute to the search. She storms out in a cloud of purple magic, ignores all their calls except for Henry, reassures him that she’s fine, tells him to stay safe, stay with them, and she’ll find his mother and get her back home to him.

 

_She has to._

 

She goes for hours more, until the sun is setting, and she can barely see straight anymore. She finds herself back in her office, and she doesn’t even know why she’s there until she curls into a ball against the door and  _oh_. Suddenly it clicks that she has been in this position before, broken and alone and leaning against this very door, and who had found her but Emma. Regina stays locked in that position for she doesn’t even know how long, until her neck begins to cramp but no boots echo in the hallway, no one is on the other side of the door, spilling promises of happy endings with an earnestness she doesn’t deserve. And she’s crying, she doesn’t know when or how it started, but she is, and her cheeks are wet and her eyes ache and her chest burns and all she can see when she closes her eyes is blonde hair and a face so close to hers through the swirling darkness.

 

She tries to scream, but she doesn’t have a voice left, not really, and all that emerges is a hoarse, broken keen that sounds so weak she despises herself.

 

At some point she must fall asleep or pass out, because the next thing she knows it’s almost dawn, and she has had enough sleep that her magic is mostly recharged again.

 

She continues for two days more, until she stops at the mansion to shower and change clothes, and Snow is there, waiting for her. Telling her Emma had sacrificed herself for her happy ending, and she would not want her sacrifice to be for nothing. Telling her to go to Robin and let herself sleep at night and to see Henry for more than ten seconds of making sure he’s alive and well.

 

 _We’ll find her_.  _It’s what we do_. She says it simply and with so much faith, Regina just wants to hit her face, but then somehow she’s sobbing into her former nemesis’s shoulder, and Snow is crying, too, and Regina is forced to acknowledge the truth of her words. Emma sacrificed herself for Regina to be happy. Somewhere in her mind Regina wonders how that is supposed to work. How watching her best friend in the world, the other mother of her child, getting swallowed alive by darkness is supposed to be conducive to her finding anything remotely close to  _happiness_.

 

But still, she should honor that, should try to take the gift Emma had sacrificed everything to give her.

 

So she does. After her shower she goes to the Granny’s. She hugs Henry and she tells David she appreciates all his efforts. She keeps trying, will never stop trying, spends hours poring over tomes in her vault, trying different spells and enchantments, though none of them yield any results. But she eats her meals when she should, and she sleeps at night, and she kisses Robin.

 

But no matter what she does, no matter where or with whom she attempts to seek comfort, nothing works. There is an Emma-shaped void that looms within her always, and no one else can fill it.

 

And when she’s lying alone in bed at night or working by herself in her crypt, all she can hear in the silence is her heart beating Em _ma_  Em _ma_  Em _ma_ , and she is starting to think she had it wrong this whole time, that her so-called Happy Ending might have been less about the destination and more about the journey. A journey with certain headstrong blonde who had been there with her every step of the way, selflessly fighting alongside her with occasional mishaps and lame jokes and adorable grins but a fierce loyalty she never asked for but was given nonetheless.

 

And she is starting to realize that the name  _Emma Swan_  is etched more deeply and permanently in her heart than it ever could be on a piece of enchanted metal.

 

Then after days and days of searching, she finds an old spell, a strong one that might actually have a shot of working. She painstakingly assembles all the precise elements it requires, summons her magic. It takes every bit of energy she has, and she is draining fast and thinks of  _hi_  and  _maybe we are_  and  _I made you a promise I intend to keep_  and she opens her eyes, and there on the map is the tiniest pinprick of light.

 


End file.
